March for Our Lives Mission Statement

Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives.

March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar. In the tragic wake of the seventeen lives brutally cut short in Florida, politicians are telling us that now is not the time to talk about guns. March For Our Lives believes the time is now.

On March 24, the kids and families of March For Our Lives will take to the streets of Washington, DC to demand that their lives and safety become a priority. The collective voices of the March For Our Lives movement will be heard.

School safety is not a political issue. There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing. The mission and focus of March For Our Lives is to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues. No special interest group, no political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country.

Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Change is coming. And it starts now, inspired by and led by the kids who are our hope for the future. Their young voices will be heard.

Our monthly membership meetings will now be held on the third Thursday of every month so that they don't conflict with the monthly meeting of the Marin Dems which many of our members like to attend.

Please join us for our March membership meeting.

The agenda for the meeting is:- Taking Back Congress - How members of Indivisible Marin can help make it happen- Campaigning 101 - Phone banking, text banking, postcards and more- Updates from Working Groups- Socializing

We need YOU to help flip 14 winnable CA districts!

Indivisible Marin launched its own phone bank last Sunday! Participants not only made calls to voters in CD-39, but also provided feedback to the district organizer which we learned will be incorporated into the campaign messaging.

While phone banking is not difficult, many people feel a bit nervous about the prospect. To help overcome that common reaction, we are offering personalized training to all new phone bankers. We will also have two co-captains staffing each phone bank to answer any questions and help with tech support.

We have already recruited nearly 90 Indivisible Marin members to join our Campaigners group. If you haven't already joined, this is the best way to receive updates about a wide range of campaigning opportunities. With the new energy of 2018 in full swing, additional members are joining each day, and we expect the group to grow to 200-300 strong!

Together we can flip 14 districts in CA as well as key national races!! To do so, we need every member to participate! We'll provide the training, the teammates, and the munchies - you provide the people-power. No more complacency!! Let’s ensure a blue victory in the midterms! Please sign up today!And don't just sign up - SHOW up!

Thank you to those who participated in our Democratic Strategy Survey, released after the election of Doug Jones in Alabama last month. The survey gathered information regarding views of the Democratic Party, their political messaging, and issues Democrats face in the upcoming 2018 election.

Here are some of the highlights from the survey. Please click on the link below for the full results.

The majority of the people who completed the survey were members of Indivisble Marin, residents of Marin County, older than 51, and identified themselves as Progressive Democrats.

Very few responders look to the DNC website for political information about candidates and policy.

Mostresponders strongly agreed that the Democrats should use strong condemnation toward Trump and the GOP agenda in their messaging.

The most popular motto was “Opportunity & Dignity for All”.

Most responders think healing the party’s divisions is necessary going into the 2018 midterm elections.

On January 20th hundreds of thousands of people around the world came together again - in small towns and big cities - to march in solidarity and support of women, the issues impacting them today, and the wave of female candidates poised to run in 2018 local, state, and national elections. Women showed their determination to have their voices heard and votes counted in numbers higher than ever before.

Members of Indivisible Marin spent a wonderful evening making blue flags to bring to the march, symbolizing the coming "Blue Wave"!

And then we joined the over 65,000 people who participated in the 2018 San Francisco Women's March Hear Our Vote!

It is January 2, 2018 and I am filled with gratitude ― for all of you who have worked so hard and put yourselves on the line for what we all want. I am grateful to the Dreamers, the immigrants and the workers, to the womxn who marched and the black and brown activists across the country who stood up in the most painful of circumstances. I’m grateful for the teachers who teach out of pure love and the educators in our homes, workplaces and communities. I’m grateful to our young people who refuse to be told they are too idealistic and are constantly challenging us to evolve. I’m grateful to those who love who they want to love and demand that love be recognized, and I’m grateful to those who challenge gender identity and stretch all of us in the best of ways.

I’m grateful to the business leaders who know that there is more to running a business than profit for shareholders and growth for growth’s sake, and to the innovators and creators who constantly find bits of light from dark corners waiting to be illuminated. I’m grateful to our judges and our courts who have been a ballast of sorts this past year. I’m grateful to the human rights and economic justice warriors in countries around the world who understand that ours is a global struggle for peace and justice, not an us-versus-them isolationist’s mission. I’m grateful to those who have resisted and those who have loved, to those who have cried and then gotten back on their feet because they knew there was no other choice.

I’m grateful to the grandparents, the elders and the wise ones ― and to those who take care of them. I’m grateful for our First Nations people who continue to be deeply generous despite hundreds of years of trauma foisted upon them, and who still challenge us to make the connections between earth and livelihood, inspiring movements for life. I’m grateful for the oceans, rivers, streams, mountains and forests that envelop us with love, beauty and serenity, generously giving us the resources we need and showering us with new energy to breathe.

I am grateful for my family, friends and all those who send constant love and support ― you are my energy and my hope. You teach me, love me even when I’m wrong, and let me ride the challenges and come out whole. I’m grateful for music, art and creativity; for books and literature; for travel and deeper understanding of the world. I’m grateful to the unsung heroes and heroines that we don’t even know about, people who are saving the world one small piece at a time. I’m grateful that human beings have the capacity for rebirth and resilience, for compassion and for vision.

I want for 2018 to be filled with justice, peace and love. There is so much mean-spiritedness and hate in the world, and it is easy to get wrapped up in our anger ― at the world, at injustice and at those who hate. Anger has its place. In organizing, it is gold to tap into anger. But anger alone can never take us where we need to go if it is not at the same time transformed into determination for a different way. We have to bring forth the passion for what we truly believe in ― justice, peace and love ― and follow that course.

We have to be firm and resolute about who we are and stay big-hearted and generous, even in the worst of situations. We have to call people in just as we call them out, give them a place to stand in the circle of hope. We have to recognize pain for what it is ― it is not the purview of any one group, everyone feels it and it is real. The hierarchy of oppression helps no-one and keeps us divided, but seeing our struggles as connected and giving voice to each other keeps us united. We have to remember that disagreeing with people is fine; it is dehumanizing people that is not and when that happens, we have to be ready to speak up. Compromise for compromise sake is never good, unless it is grounded in principles. Principled compromise is always good, and for that we must know what the core value is and work to get there together.

We are best when we allow ourselves to touch our own and each other’s hearts in the work we do, whatever it may be. We can never be afraid to stand up for what is right, no matter what others may say. And sometimes if that means taking a lonely road, if what we are standing for is true, then perhaps moonlight or sunshine will light our way and make it less lonely. Perhaps birds will join us on that path, and slowly, others will too.

Standing up for things when everyone else already is doing so is not really courageous. Real courage comes when we stand for things that aren’t popular yet, and make them so. Real courage is saying things that others may not want to hear ― perhaps that we ourselves don’t want to hear ― but doing it in a way that people CAN hear. In Emily Dickinson’s words, “Tell the truth but tell it slant.” We are best when we remember that human beings can change ― all of us! ― and that there are few people who are only good or only bad. Give us the wisdom and compassion to allow for nuance, holding two seemingly contradictory truths at once.

We have work to do this year. To put forward that vision of what we know is right: healthcare for all, education for all, good-paying jobs that give us all dignity of self, environmental justice, workers rights, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, civil rights, democracy reform, equal treatment for all regardless of any identification, living wages and retirement security.

Really, what this is all about is investing in us, regular folks, people who wake up every day and go about their work ― whether in their homes, or offices, or forests or small towns, steel mills or coal mines, rural or urban. It’s about leveling the playing field and giving people the respect they deserve to know that they have a fair shot, that they’ll be able to put food on the table, have a roof over their heads, send their kids to get a good education and retire with some security. That they won’t be one health care crisis away from bankruptcy, and that they will know that if their car breaks down, they can fix it instead of losing their job because they couldn’t get to work. It’s about respecting who we each are and what we bring. It’s about confronting racism and sexism and the refusals to recognize everyone’s value that stops the playing fields from being level. It’s about recognizing the reality of the black mothers and fathers who worry that their sons and daughters may not come home. It’s about every member of the trans community being able to live freely without fear of prejudice and violence. It’s about finding real economic solutions for white rural families who feel forgotten and left behind.

It’s about dignity and respect and love ― even when someone is different from what we know. That’s some of what we’re fighting for, that’s our proposition agenda that we need to put front and center even as we launch our resistance.

So, this year, I wish for all of us that deep sense of knowing at this consequential time in our history that we are doing everything we can to protect our democracy, to make it real for people here and around the world, to stand for peace and shun war, to place our trust and faith in the many and not the few, and to love as much as we possibly can. To resistance, to opposition and to proposition...to believing that another world IS possible and we are the ones to make it so. Happy New Year!

You’ve done the unthinkable. You’ve forced more than a dozen high-profile, safe Republicans to retire because of your constant constituent pressure. You defeated the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Twice. You’ve supported progressives up and down the ballot in Virginia, Michigan, Washington, and Alabama. And you’ve won.

Most importantly, you’ve created thousands of hyper-local movements across the country that have Republicans and the Trump Administration shaking in their boots.

None of this was imaginable on December 14, 2016 (exactly one year ago!) when we sat down to publish the Indivisible Guide. We were going through stages of grief like so many of you. Republicans were lining up behind the Trump Administration and some Democrats were talking about working with the Trump Administration as though it was a normal Republican Administration. But we, and millions of people across the country, knew nothing about a Trump Administration would be normal.

We heard from friends and family that they wanted to get politically active for the first time. They wanted to make change. They wanted to do whatever it would take to stop the worst parts of the Trump Administration. They wanted to fight back, but they didn’t know where to start.

As former Congressional staffers, we knew that a President’s ability to enact much of his or her agenda relies on whether or not Congress went along with it. And Congress is accountable to their constituents. So we wrote a practical, Civics 101-style document to help newcomers to activism realize their power and leverage in our political system. We called it the Indivisible Guide.

We put the Guide online and went to bed one year ago thinking we’d done a good thing… and maybe a few people would find it useful.

Within days, tens of thousands of people downloaded the Guide and read it. You showed up at town halls with and without your members of Congress. You started making phone calls. You visited their district offices. You put up missing posters (and milk cartons!) with your MoCs’ photos. You took control of the narrative and made sure your elected officials knew they were accountable to you. 6,000 of you even took the Guide and started your own Indivisible Groups and ground the Republicans’ agenda to a halt, while fighting for bold, progressive values.

One year ago, we didn't set out to tell people to have hope. We set out to tell people they have power. And with that power, you gave an entire country hope and showed them resisting the Trump agenda was possible.

Today’s the first anniversary of this movement and we’re celebrating you. We have a lot of fun things in store on Facebook and Twitter to show our gratitude, and we can’t wait for you to see them. But first, we want to share a message and a video we made to commemorate the brilliant work you’ve done this year. Watch now:

This is how it starts. This is how we win. We started with a pretty specific goal: local, defensive congressional advocacy to stop Trump’s agenda. But what we’ve seen around the country is something even more powerful. You’re building a foundational, progressive infrastructure at the community level.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to build this movement. We can’t wait to work with you and take this energy and passion into 2018 as we take back the House (and maybe even the Senate!).

Could today be any sweeter? What an overwhelmingly gratifying victory last night! Thanks to each and everyone of you who called, texted and wrote postcards to the voters in Alabama. YOU made this happen! And now we have the vital momentum we need to knock the hell out of the GOP in 2018.

But we can't let up for even a day. Even though the blue wave has gained such momentum, there is a long path to victory in 2018 with many challenges ahead. We must stay at the top of our game. We need to be clear with our messaging and smart with our strategy. That's why Indivisible Marin's Democratic Strategy Working Group is launching a survey to give the Democratic Party feedback from its grassroots base.

This hard-working group spent a significant amount of time researching and analyzing the Democratic landscape, and decided that providing feedback to the Democratic National Committee from a national sample of grassroots political activists would be a major step in the right direction. They are piloting the survey with members of Indivisible Marin and Indivisible San Francisco, and will then work out any possible kinks discovered in the survey design before rolling out the plan to chapters nationwide with the support and assistance of Indivisible National. The survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete, and responses are anonymous. Please be a part of this important project by taking the survey today. If not today, then enter a reminder in your calendar to complete it by Monday. Use this excellent opportunity to make your voice heard!

The bottomline is that if we have Jones' new YES vote, Collins' reinstated YES vote and Corker’s existing YES vote, we stop the tax bill.

Operating by the logic above, we have a very obvious two-part strategy:

1) We focus ALL of our energy until 12/12 on campaigning and donating to Doug Jones.

2) When we get him elected, we immediately pivot to lobbying Collins to stand up to her principles and vote NO on the revised tax bill.

HERE’S OUR JOB FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS!

What’s our best shot at getting Jones elected? Getting out the African American vote!! A leader of the Alabama's NAACP organization has partnered with a group called People Demanding Action to organize a unique opportunity to reach these crucial voters.

1) Click on any of the links under the heading "Phonebanks," then click on the central button, and then click where it asks you to create an "Action ID." Once you have an Action ID and have created your password, you can start. The first time you see a name and a phone number you are already in the phonebank and can start calling that person. That is NOT an example of a voter - that is an actual voter in Alabama. Don't stay in the phonebank when you're done, log out.

2) If you see something that says "Enter your NGP VAN Code," do not do that. Log out and log back in, and that should not reappear.

3) We are calling principally African American voters but it's definitely not 100%.

4) We are mainly calling rural counties in Alabama. Speak slowly and clearly and very politely.

5) If they are resistant to talking or say that they have received many calls already, go right to "I wanted to know if you think you'll need a ride to the polls.” If yes, The NAACP is arranging drivers, and the script will advise you what to say.

IF YOU PREFER A GROUP SETTING FOR PHONE BANKING, there are many opportunities to campaign for Doug Jones via Democracy Action’s local phone/text bank centers.

Please click on the eventbrite links below to register and get details/directions: Registering on eventbrite makes it easier for us to manage.

In the resistance we continue to partner with others who are committed to protecting American values of inclusion, equality and justice. The latest partnership was begun in a recent meeting with Senator, Mike McGuire in his San Rafael office. Sue Saunders, Heather Rhamen, Sami Mericle and Lori Saltveit reviewed with the Senator important California legislation addressing presidential tax return reform, improvements for the environment and the well being of DACA recipients. At his invitation, we look forward to meeting with him again early in 2018.